The LadyKillers

Les vacances et l’ecriture*

*Vacations and Writing

by Margaret Lucke

A writer never has a vacation. For a writer, life consists
 of either writing or thinking about writing.
-- Eugene Ionesco

Ionesco may be right. Even when writers take time off, our brains keep chugging away on the story. Plot details pop into mind at odd moments. Characters whisper secrets in our ear. No matter what we’re doing, the story is humming in the background.

So, yes, we're always writing. But that doesn't mean we have to stay chained to our desks. Sometimes a change of pace in a fresh environment--in other words, a vacation--is exactly what our creativity needs.

A writers group I've belonged to for many years used to have a wonderful tradition. Each autumn, we held our own writers retreat. We rented a pair of cottages in the nearby seaside town of Stinson Beach (see photo at right) and spent a week there writing. No phones. No families. No errands to run. Just our stories and the companionship of other writers. We each had our own room to work in and a long beach to walk on. Fresh air. The sounds of the wind and the gulls. Everyone brought her own food for breakfast and lunch. In the evenings we took turns making dinner and gathered by the fireplace for wine and conversation. We went home with our spirits rejuvenated and lots of work accomplished.                        

Then our horizons expanded. One of our members, Joan, was offered the opportunity to spend September and October of that year in a grand maison in a medieval hilltop village in Provence. The cost was extremely reasonable, and the house would accommodate a large number of guests. Why not, she suggested, hold our annual retreat there?

 
The village of Venasque

Why not, indeed? So off we went to Venasque, which sits east of Avignon in the midst of vineyards and lavender fields near the slopes of Mont Ventoux, the southernmost peak of the Alps. We couldn’t all stay for the full two months but each of us got there for at least a few days, as did some of Joan’s other friends. I spent all of October in France, one of the most memorable months of my life.

The days quickly settled into an agreeable rhythm. Church bells woke me at seven. I'd read in bed or write at the table in my pretty blue bedroom until nine. That gave me time for breakfast before the daily tour began at ten. Several of us would take off in our leased car to visit a museum or a monastery, or explore a Roman ruin or a medieval town, or stroll through a picturesque outdoor market. We'd stop at a patisserie with an outdoor terrace for a café crème and a pain au chocolat, then head home for dinner and a glass or two of the local wine. Around nine we'd start drifting to our rooms, some to sleep, others like me to write for a couple of hours.

Here I am, enjoying a cup of tea in our Venasque kitchen

We were enthusiastic tourists, yet we got a lot of work done. There was no computer, no phone, no TV, no billboards along the roads, no job to go to--none of the constant distractions and demands for attention that we experienced in our normal lives. And there were plenty of new sights, sounds, and scents to stimulate both our senses and our mental story engines. Going home was hard, yet the positive effects of the trip lasted for a long time. I still get a boost just from the memories.

France was a hard act to follow, and that trip proved to be the writing group's last retreat. The next year, and again the one after, we couldn’t find a week when we were all free to go to Stinson Beach, and the tradition died. Lately, though, some of us have been reminiscing about what a boon those little vacations were. There's been talk about doing it again. If that happens, sign me up.

Once upon a time, at least forty years ago, I actually worked in a juvenile detention center.  Before you have me doddering with my walker, I was still in college then (OK, maybe I am that old), untrained and totally unsuited to the job.  I lasted about three months. 

It was supposed to be a model facility- one house for girls, the other for boys.  On the outside, it looked good, sort of like a boarding school with very high fences.  But I soon learned that there was a big secret to the place.  It was completely anti-female.  This reflected the justice system at the time, which I wish I could say has changed.

The boys at the place were in for burglary, vandalism, auto theft, trying to knife someone.  The girls?  Their crimes were "incorrigability", "running away", and one shoplifting.  All but one of the twelve had been raped.  One doughy, plain child had been given by her family to an uncle in the hope he would pay their bills.  Every one of them was a victim rather than an offender.

Even worse was the attitude of the men who ran the place.  They acted as if the girls were willing prostitutes whom they had to save.  They made comments that today would, I hope, put them behind bars.

Building on Ann's comments, I understand now that there were two prisons there, one of the body and the other of the mind.  And, as a very young and naive woman, I was in danger of landing in the latter.   I wish I could go back and do the job better, stand up for those battered children.  I don't know what happened to them and shall always wonder.

I've never written about this and rarely spoken of it.  Not knowing how to help is one of the great regrets of my life.  I remember the feeling I had when I drove away for the last time, as if an enormous rock had rolled from my shoulders.   Then I was relieved to go -- but now I would have tried to find away to take the girls with me.

First Books... and Turkey

So, technically, today's post is supposed to be all about first books. And while it will be that, I would like to add a little dash of thanksgiving, because now, years later, I can be truly thankful for the horrendous series of events that brought about my first book. But first, a little background...

I was in the second grade when I put aside childish dreams of being a spy/cartoonist/veterinarian to follow the calling that pulled my ear each night: writing. I had things to say, things the world needed to hear. Granted, the first one was about penguins afloat on an iceberg and the second a book about time-traveling orphans and an easy-going beach-comber. Hey, I said I had things to say that the world needed to hear; I didn't say they were things anyone wanted to hear.

Anyway, the dream continued on through grade school, through a middle-school stint where everything I wrote featured some kind of coming-of-age segment (braces, menstruation), through a melancholy high school Sylvia Plath phase, through a collegiate change-the-world phase and off into the real world. Post graduation, I figured I would take an indiscriminate day job while pushing out the Great American Novel at night. How hard could it be?

Ten years later, I knew. It was hard. Really freakin' hard. So, being unattached and with the minimum of responsibilities, I quit my job. It's now or never, I told myself.

And then I broke up with the man I planned to marry.

And then my house burned down.

And then I found myself over thirty and back in my salmon-pink childhood bedroom, cuddling my ratty old teddy bear underneath a poster of The New Kids on The Block, their smiling mugs still glossy with Bonnie Bell Lip Smackers.

I was miserable at that time in my life. I was lonely; my sole possessions were a sequined halter top, a left shoe, and the clothes I wore on the day of the fire. I lost everything. But it took losing everything - everything - to be reminded of my purpose in life. I was going to write. I was supposed to write. And for that tiny realization, that small certainty, I wast thankful.

I was also a slow learner and ridiculously hard headed (hence the need to have my entire house burned down), but that's beside the point. Now, four years later, my life is nearly unrecognizable from the salmon-colored one. I write. I go on book tours. I have my own home and a wardrobe that includes far more than that sequined tank top, but above all, every single day, I'm thankful.

My first novel, Rebound Guy, came out of that miserable experience. I snagged my agent with it, and although it never sold (though it is currently available as an ebook on Amazon), it was the novel that got me on my feet again, pointed me in the right direction. I was never a woman who thanked the universe for small favors. But now, so many years later, I don't wait for the day the turkey pops out of the oven, the day the top button pops off my pants: I make it a point to be thankful for every day, for every person and every experience that brought me to my current state. Because good or bad, I know with my whole self that I am exactly where I'm meant to be.

With that, I wish a happy Thanksgiving to you all and I hope that you all take a moment today to think about what it is you are truly thankful for.

 

Retrospective?

I'll be right up front here. "Retrospective" means nothing to me.

I do not come from people who look back. We're a restless tribe, always moving forward. But lately I've been wondering if a little looking back and assessing could possibly make the next phase of life with my husband less crazy.

You see, we're in the process of buying a house. If you have steady employment, a 10% down payment, and not too much other debt, this is as easy as falling off a log in the current economic climate.

Except in San Francisco, which is the city I have my heart set on. And especially not if you are desperate for a single family residence, not a condo, TIC, or other exotic shared living arrangement. Here, the inventory is low, prices have risen about 10% in the last year or two, and prices are high. Not to mention coping with the intricacies of tenant's rights, the block-to-block changes within a single neighborhood that take you from posh to trash in no time at all.

I don't know how many of you have been through the process, but we're finding that the pressure of making our mutual dreams fit with the low-inventory, high-cost reality is causing us to look back a lot, trying to answer questions that didn't really matter until it was time to pony up most of my pay for the next 30 years. What do we really value? What's more important, space or location? What if we can't afford anyplace that isn't too big a compromise? And lately, who knew we both were dying to live in a home built well before 1950? These are not the kinds of questions you can anwer until you are put into the pressure cooker that is tryng to find houses for sale in San Francisco.

If you made a retrospective of our past decisions, you might wonder how in the world a woman who moved religiously every 18 months for 20 years ever got hooked up with a guy who lived in the same place for 20 years. If you made a retrospective of our past mistakes, you might wonder where we got the hubris to imagine we could afford a mortgage. We live for the thrill of the experience, not the steady and comforting acquisition of assets or other things. And yet, here we are, trying to locate in a single place all that we want for the rest of our lives.

Given that past behavior is one of the best predictors of future performance, and given that the retrospective of our lives would indicate not the slightest skill or aptitude for home ownership, you might well ask, "What are we thinking?"

Maybe it's as simple as this. After long and wandering journeys, we finally know, deep in our hearts, that we're home whenever we're together. And we just want a safe and warm place to park all that delightful affection and trust, before they repeal rent control. With the kind help of our patient real estate agent, Michelle Bouchet, we just might find it.

As men and women gather in this country's large cities and camp out to protest the out-of-control spiral of greed and acquisition that gripped the financial and housing sectors, it feels selfish to be fighting so hard for an old-fashioned American dream, home ownership. Please forgive us, and wish us luck. If I stay in one place for long enough, I may finally learn how to look over my shoulder, and learn from the past.

If all of this is too esoteric, let me say one simple thing. My favorite film retrospective is the yearly film noir festival at the Castro in San Francisco in late January. Check it out!

Now and Then

By Margaret Lucke

This week’s theme, Retrospective, is a timely one for me. Last month my husband Charlie was busy reviewing several decades' worth of his photographs. He was making decisions about which ones, out of the 40,000 or so possibilities in his files, he was going to include in a solo exhibit of his work called "Now and Then." His choices are on display until November 20 at the Frank Bette Center for the Arts in Alameda, California.

I wasn’t involved in the selection process, and I appear in only one photo in the show. In fact, some that made the cut were pictures I'd never seen before. But many of them bring back memories. They chart my life as well as his, reminding me of where I was and what I was doing, even what I was thinking and feeling, at a particular time.

In a review written for the Alameda Sun, critic Karen Malpas commented that the "images reflect a Lucke world of far-reaching curiosity, beauty and fulfillment" (yes, I’m indulging in a bit of bragging here on Charlie's behalf).

Then she observed, "A retrospective show like this lets a prolific artist examine his creative output, to see where he has been and who he has become as a result of his unique life experiences ... He can see the recurring themes that have pulled at him and can connect the dots of his vision because, as Steve Jobs observed of his own career, 'You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking back.' "

I don't count myself as a prolific artist, and at this point I'm more comfortable looking forward than looking back. But I can say for sure that one of the recurring themes of my life is writing--both the process of putting words on the page myself and the work done by all of the authors whose books I take such pleasure in reading. I've been a writer and a reader ever since I can remember.

So here’s a brief retrospective of my writing career:

Budding Author

By the time I was six I had written a book (a very short one), several stories, and lots of poems as I practiced for my future career.

Aspiring Writer

My jobs after college all involved working with words. The marketing documents I wrote were fiction of a sort, but short stories was more fun. I piled up unpublished manuscripts. Heap, the Tibetan terrier, chaired my fan club.

Published Novelist

Of course I’m smiling here. My first novel, A Relative Stranger, is about to be published by St. Martin’s Press. This picture graced the book jacket.

And what about now? Look to the left and you’ll see me as I look today. Well, not quite. My hair is shorter at the moment. But I’m definitely looking forward as I write my next book and plan for the one after that.

Retrospective? From the mouth of babes.

 

Looking back, looking forward

 - from Susan

 

The definition of retrospective that Michael used yesterday for his post doesn’t quite work for an author with only one book in print, unless the collection of my previous work includes all umpteen drafts of the first three chapters of MURDER IN THE ABSTRACT. Hold a good thought for me, please, that there will come a day when I have a string of books out from which to construct a retrospective. Until then, I have to cast a wider net to find something relevant to write about here.

Musing, ruminating, and reviewing are other definitions of the word, and I can do that without a string of books. The idea of looking back is seductive. It’s a lot easier, after all, to look back than to look forward. The work’s been done, the decisions made, the goals achieved (or the failure borne), and the time is over, so one has the luxury of looking backward at a more comfortable pace, generally, than when one is in the moment. Museums are repositories of what’s already been created, so they look back. Active artists in any field look forward to their next creative act.

The term “retrospective” is relative. I dropped by an artist’s studio once to see how she was doing getting ready for an upcoming solo show at her San Francisco gallery.

“Frantic,” she said. “I have four new paintings to finish.”

“But it’s a retrospective,” I said. “You don’t have to do new work.”

She looked at me like I was crazy. “Of course I do. I don’t want a retrospective that’s focused on old work.”

 

Retrospective

By Michael A. Black

Click on the illustrations to see full-sized versions.

This week’s blog subject couldn’t have come at a more appropriate time. My new book, The Incredible Adventures of Doc Atlas, was just released last week. It’s a collection of five pulp-style novellas set in the 1940s and 50s. Doc Atlas is a world renowned scientist and adventurer who, along with his two best friends and his reporter girl friend, travels the world investigating mysteries and strange phenomena. He first appeared in the novel Melody of Vengeance, about five years ago. And now, Doc’s back.

Since the stories are set in the last century, they often contain real historical figures and events. Written with a retrospective hindsight, the stories often offer legitimate theories on some past mysteries like what really happened back in 1947 when something crashed in the desert of New Mexico near a town called Roswell, or the real reason the mudslinging senator from Wisconsin fell from favor after inciting the nation during the contentious House UnAmerican Activities Committee hearings. Other mysteries are also explored, such as what Egyptian hieroglyphics are doing on a wall inside a recently opened Mayan pyramid in Mexico, a gorilla with the transplanted brain of an executed criminal, and an out-of-this world space ship discovered by two Eskimos in the Arctic tundra.

Yeah, Doc stories are fun, and they’re meant to be. Perhaps the best thing about writing this new book is the collaboration with my best friend, Ray Lovato, who I met many years ago climbing up a dirt hill when we were five and six years old. (He’s a year younger than I am, but we share the same birthday.) Ray and I have collaborated on Doc Atlas for years. The idea of putting his adventures into a story began one year when he gave me an unexpected birthday gift: the opening pages of a Doc novella called “His Master’s Voice.” I responded the next year with a Doc novel, Melody of Vengeance, which was subsequently published. (It’s the only book I’d ever written with no bad words in it--- Until The Incredible Adventures of Doc Atlas came out, of course.)

Recently the character has experienced a resurgence of sorts. My buddy and great artist, Geof Darrow (of The Matrix fame), did the fantastic cover for the new Doc Omnibus. And in keeping with the style of the old pulps, upon which the characters are based, we put illustrations inside the book to augment the stories. These were done with excellent artistic aplomb by my friend Tim Faurote and Ray’s nephew, Matthew Lovato. (Matt’s also doing the cover and interior work for Doc’s next appearance, which will be in December in an anthology called Tales of Masks and Mayhem. We’re also working on another story that we hope will appear in another pulp style anthology headed by a story by the great Andrew Vachss.

But more than anything else, the adventures of Doc Atlas are a labor of love. I know this blog is a bit different from my usual ones, but this was such a special event for me I couldn’t resist.

Thanks.

News and Next Week: Retrospective

News

In California:

• Ann Parker and Priscilla Royal  give a reading on Sunday, Nov 6, at 2 PM, M is for Mystery in San Mateo 
• Priscilla Royal and Ann Parker give a reading on Tuesday, Nov 8, at 11 AM, Towne Center Books, 555 Main St, Pleasanton 

In Colorado, Ann Parker is visitng  these locations:

• Black Cat Books, Friday, November 11, 2011, 6 p.m., Manitou Springs, Colorado
  Wine, Cheese, and Chocolate … With Beth Groundwater. Ann's newest book, MERCURY RISING, is set in Manitou Springs
• Barnes & Noble Booksellers Briargate Saturday, November 12, 4–6 p.m., Colorado Springs, Colorado. It's a Fundraiser for Pikes Peak Writers  (Can also shop online for this fundraiser through B&N Bookfair ) … With Beth Groundwater
• The Book Haven Sunday, November 13, 2 to 4:30 p.m., Salida, Colorado. “Constructing a Mystery” workshop followed by book signing  … With Beth Groundwater

Next Week

In the arts, a retrospective is usually a collection of representative works by the author, painter, musician, songwriter, illustrator, or photographer, accompanied by commentary by Experts. In the business world, a retrospective is a tense 60 minute meeting where everyone is welcome to praise what went well, complain about what went wrong, and take action items to make sure the good stuff keeps happening and the bad stuff stops. I don't think the artistic retrospective is quite so goal oriented!

Whatever it means to our LadyKillers, they're sharing it this week, no holds barred!